I do that too, and now it's mostly because I simply don't know, and I'm not familiar with these programs or the OS anymore. The last version I used heavily is 2000, and I haven't touched Vista. For my computer skills I actually want to go out and buy a copy of Vista (or if someone wants, they can mail me theirs so I don't give any cash to MS) just in order to keep up to date on things. I don't really go over to peoples' houses and fix their computers anymore... My family's setup with Ubuntu so I don't have to troubleshoot for them anymore, and I'm simply not familiar with Windows anymore. I haven't forgotten all of the knowledge that applies to Windows 2000 and previous versions, but knowledge of Windows circa back then doesn't really help me solve all problems for people today. Sometimes it's frustrating because it just seems like certain problems would be avoided if using Linux or FOSS in the first place, like parent says.
Not to mention software that expires. I don't know if this still applies because I haven't used Windows for a few years, but I've downloaded a bunch of 'niche' software that I considered useful and backed up to disc. Especially software where they've upgraded it and added new features that made the software either too feature-filled when I just want something simple for one purpose, or when I needed a particular app because it was the most optimized and would load up quickly and do what I want. When I had to reinstall Windows or customize a new computer for someone, then I would install that software. However, then I would find out that it would expire and you had to manually roll back the date to install, or change a registry entry, or it would use some other way to tell what date it was and would simply refuse to install. Sometimes there was software that detected an active internet connection and if it found an update it would refuse to let you continue using the current version.
Sometimes the setup program would detect the version of Windows you're using and refuse to install if it didn't take into account future releases of Windows. For example there are programs that would install on Windows 95/98 but not ME/2000/XP. Some would install on Windows 2000 but not XP or Vista. Some programs required XP and refused to install on earlier versions even if the program would work fine if I manually copied the files and registry entries.
If I installed a new version of Windows, sometimes it required new drivers, and sometimes those drivers were never available. I bought this one 56K modem from Cardinal and it worked fine in Windows 98. When I upgraded to Windows 2000, the modem required new drivers that never existed because the company went bankrupt. In Linux, the drivers are included in the kernel and are maintained along with the kernel, so I don't have to worry. I don't even have to hunt down driver CDs or visit annoying web sites that require me to take out my card and read some serial number on it, or pay for a drivers CD. I don't have to visit all of those annoying "drivers database" sites that often require passwords and pollute search engine results.
With Linux I can boot up with a LiveCD and access all of my files, even if I forgot a password or if I poked around somewhere I shouldn't have as root (as a Linux noob this helped). I can even take my hard disk out and put it in someone else's machine and I won't have to make a single configuration change to boot up into the environment I had setup. With Windows it would sometimes barf, or at least it would screw up what drivers were installed when I would put the hard disk in another machine and then back in mine. If it was a different motherboard you could be totally screwed.
With Linux I've been able to setup usable systems on old hardware for family members that find their machines too slow with today's antivirus and firewall software. I've been able to limit the damage they can do to their own systems quite easily. I don't know about anyone else but I had a much easier time learning about permissions with Linux than I did about group policies in Windows. I had a much easier time editing config files than I did editing the registry (and figuring out what I had to look for) in order to lock up various user interface settings so that they couldn't be modified.
I had a much easier time using a wider array of file formats for the purposes I wanted... for example I could more easily convert between different video and audio formats, and the programs I liked all shared the same libraries for the various codecs, it's not like you had to have seperate plugin formats for each application like is often the case in Windows.
Those are just a few reasons off the top of my head why I like Linux better. I'm also a gamer, but when it comes to games I have consoles. If I want to play games on my PC I use an emulator, and that suits me fine. I didn't used to enjoy gaming under Windows anyway, any time I had to reins
"But watermarking? Eh. I don't care. You're supposed to not be sharing music you bought, and unless someone actually breaks in and steals it, there's really no legitimate reason to find music that you bought out on the net somewhere."
Sure, but you can share your songs under fair use, etc. Say someone you made a mix for decides to start distributing one of the songs. Would you get in trouble or your friend?
I wonder how many calories video games have? Oh right, it's the McDonald's that people while playing the video games. Personally I play a lot of video games, watch a lot of TV, and go to work. I don't go out of my way to do physical activity but I don't inhibit it either, I just do what feels natural. I eat well though. Ever since I cut out McDonald's and drinking soda, I dropped 65 lbs over like 4 months. Now I'm not overweight in the least, and even then I wasn't really fat before, but bending over made me sweat, and I didn't like that. I still eat about a bag of cookies a day (a habit which I am cutting out now, I just can't quit all my bad habits all at once you know) and it's nowhere near as aweful as McDonald's, and I don't feel like vomiting after I eat either.
I recently bought a Powerbook and have gotten into OS X. I really like it, and it's great for doing certain things. I can see why the experience is a lot different than just slapping an OS X theme on your current OS. I've used it for a month though, but I can see why the people who generally like Windows would gravitate more towards Linux. The apps work in a way that's more familiar to them, and the variety of applications that Windows users expect is there.
With OS X in terms of the normal shareware and freeware apps you find, you're not going to get what you would on Windows, and Linux's offerings are more in line with that as well. There are multiple versions of software to suit many niche needs, and they have more complex options. On OS X, everything is geared towards integrating with the desktop and the usual applications. On Linux and Windows, everything is made to be extensible and support a wider variety of hardware and hacking options than the usual stuff for OS X.
Personally, I go back to Linux often when I'm not just browsing the web because there are still more emulators I can use for games, and for development use I find I have a wider array of libraries and examples to choose from for what I'm doing, the applications I use integrate better with each other, there is more support for a wider variety of formats in each application I use, and most of all, because I am not stuck using commercial software that restricts me in certain ways from doing what I want. I find that on OS X, and to a lesser degree Windows, a lot of artificial restrictions are enforced on proprietary software, and I can't do what I want.
For myself and my family, we're set up on Linux, and most of my friends use quite a lot of open source software just because it lets them do what they want and doesn't enforce artificial restrictions. For my family it's because I can lock things down in a way that makes it still easy for them to do what they want without a lot of prompts or greyed out options, and I get a software platform that works the exact same no matter what their hardware is so it's easier for me to support.
Sure he's free to speak, but what about all the people paying attention to him, quoting him, featuring him, etc... are they just capitalizing on this or are they fucking nuts too? I even have to wonder about me, reading this story and actually making a post.
People don't really learn german or latin or whatever roots to their languages these days, so they're unaware of the true meanings of some words. It's not uncommon for half of peoples' vocabularies to come from words that they just know by rote. People on the internet and in music (and pop culture in general) are now just making up words because they feel they have a word that fits better simply because they feel the word they use somehow has an intrinsic meaning, or that the use implies its meaning and it takes hold. The language you know and love only is used in business and has its roots in proper grammar and definitions etc; It's not the same language that people use in social situations or popular culture. This pop language will continue to grow and evolve because it has its roots in today's culture because the people creating and growing these terms do so because they understand where the words come from. They don't understand the roots of their language so they're not going to use words that they learnt by rote instead of by the root, when they can just as easily throw out words that have much more meaning to them and the people around them. We're just going to have to start having "formal english" and "social english."
By instinct, I would pronounce a lot of words the wrong way, such as "draught" or "digest", because I don't know how to pronounce those words except phonetically. I never learned the roots of the words or how to pronounce certain things when or why. Some words are going to sound or look weird to me or even seem out of place just because I don't know these things, so I will be much more likely to use words that mean something more to me and tie into my experiences more.
I don't know if you've seen some french books, and then heard french people talking. Around here at least, it's totally not the same thing. One is definitely more formal and one is definitely more slang-laden. It doesn't even matter if the book is for casual reading. If you walk into a job, then you're not going to use the slang-laden french either, you'll turn to the more formal french. And then when you're hanging out with friends, it's back to slang-french. That's just how things will always be until people in formal situations accept slang, or people are taught languages formally and learn the roots of their languages as well.
File sharing legislation will initially target illegal downloads
How do they figure out if a transfer is illegal? Surely people transfer copyrighted materials for many legal reasons. This is always the big problem with these schemes.
I don't know about you, but Halo 3 was a letdown to me because I felt like I was just playing Halo 2.5. The single player campaign was kind of short and not very exciting.
Another one for Mario Galaxy was the first level you play... you start walking over the edge and the level flips over and you realize you can stand on almost any surface if you're clever with the gameplay physics...
Mario Galaxy is definitely my game of the year. It's pretty much what every Mario fan has been waiting for after New Super Mario Bros. Right from the beginning, you keep getting wowed until you just can't believe you're playing this game. The physics of the gravity, the variety of gameplay in the different power-ups you can grab, and the focus on core Mario gameplay really brings this game to the top. This game will have you perfecting the controls in every sense, and they're a joy to use. You'll be doing acrobatics all over levels to reach areas that seem impossible to get to. The game is also constantly surprising with the various bosses and tricks the different levels use to get the most out of the gameplay engine.
I just sincerely hope this won't be the last actual 'traditional' (platformer) Mario game we'll be seeing on the Wii. Mario Sunshine was pretty much the only one on the Gamecube, Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64, and Mario World for the SNES, but NES got SMB 1, 2, and 3. I realize it takes a lot to put out one of these games, but I really don't want to be playing any Princess Peach, Wario, or Luigi games or any of these knock-offs. They're great in their own right, but really you wish you were playing a new Mario game. I realize too much could water down the franchise, but it definitely won't get tired if there's a new one every 2 or 1.5 years. Come on, Nintendo! I want as much Mario as I can get!
People will start tuning out anything that isn't directed towards them. After I hear enough of this crap, like probably 1 minute's worth, I'm pretty much going to stop paying attention unless I hear my name. I give out fake names or made-up nicknames when registering for anything*, so even if they've got my name and figure out how to identify me with the device that's emitting the sound in the first place, they're still not going to get my attention. And am I really going to turn my iPod off? I've got music on just about every device I own now, I'm listening to music almost every chance I get.
Plus, look at car alarms... these things go off every 5 seconds in parking lots, nobody starts panicking or screaming, nobody calls the cops. People hear it so often now that it's just a deterrant to the crook if they get nervous enough about what they're doing, or if they take too long doing it. If people hear the alarm going silent they think "Finally!" not "What's happening now?"
See, that's kind of my point. If marketing is invasive enough, people stop paying attention and start finding ways to get the attention of advertisers off them. Instead of people putting up with advertisements and the ads having some effect on the population, instead they'll lead the population to shutting the ads out entirely.
Then the only person selling anything will be the guy who can block the ads... kinda like the autodial blocker. So brilliance all around fellows, congrats on this one.
They promote OSS at every turn. All of their APIs are open and documented. They use open formats and open protocols whenever they can. They release application frameworks for others to use to build applications that play nice with OSS. They release applications across all platforms, actually supporting versions of their software that work on OSS platforms and with OSS software. But to retain the attention of users, they choose to keep some of their solutions as proprietary, but they are ones they maintain themselves. You want them to open source their search engine, but the only reason their search engine is successful is because of their constant tweaking and additions in their specific way, and users still use their search engine without problems. OSS can interface with their search engine if they want to leverage its benefits.
How could OSS really benefit from Google open sourcing their search engine? By publicizing the inner workings of their main asset, it would divert attention away from google. Google supporting OSS in the ways that they do wouldn't matter so much anymore if nobody was paying attention to them. If everyone had what made Google unique, then others could get the attention Google deserved but put it to a use that may not be leaning towards OSS so much, and then OSS wouldn't be as much of a benefit anymore. It serves Linux well because an OS is something every computer needs, but a search engine doesn't need to be run by anyone, and Google seem to be doing a good job. It's not like there aren't any OSS search solutions. But OSS seems to be benefiting as much from Google as the other way around.
Don't you think Google is giving something back to the OSS community just by standing as a viable example of people using OSS in a commercial environment? Don't you think that buys OSS credibility? They run on Linux, they are putting a lot of force behind Firefox, and all the other stuff I mentioned above.
What exactly do you want Google to do, and how do you think it would actually benefit OSS in reality more than what they are doing now? You're really unhappy about the current scenario?
Anyone who installs "beta", "community technology preview", or "release candidate" software on their systems and then complains about the experience and how it sucks should be branded with a big ol' "D U M B A S S" on their short-bus-riding-tuckus.
What about those who are trying to install the release candidate in order to get a working system out of the software that they had installed previously, which was supposed to be a good experience but wasn't? This is typically why you have people asking "Should I install the beta patch?" on just about any amount of software, unless you're talking about overclockers that want beta firmwares/BIOS/drivers that supposedly eek out marginal performance gains. Don't immediately think someone installing a beta or release candidate of critical software is some kind of dumbass. Users want to know other users' experiences, especially regarding improvements on outstanding bugs.
You're way off base here. The way I play Metroid 3 is on the most sensitive setting with no lock-on targetting... The only time I ever use the lock-on button at all is because when you hold that button down, it locks your movement into strafe, which makes it simple to walk across straight and narrow areas like tiny bridges or whatever... or if I want to jump a lot but still want to be facing forwards. Even then, when lock-on mode is turned on in this way, you can still move the targetting reticle around to aim at different areas of the screen, all it does is it freezes the screen in the direction it was in when you pressed the button... you still have to aim at what you want to shoot at.
When stuff like this happens, all countries have this in common: it's pretty much solely the government's doing, and the citizens were not considered or consulted while making the decision which affects them so much. Definitely it's not what I want as a Canadian.
Downloadable content is ugly. Artifacts are everywhere. I've only got about 10 movies in HD (bluray), and after a while I get used to seeing it. I've gone back to watch some DVDs and even if I'm just comparing it to standard definition stuff on bluray, it looks ugly. If you watch it on a CRT 480i TV, you'll never see the difference, but on anything else, even 480p TVs, you notice that DVDs look ugly.
Now take downloadable content. The bitrate is higher, compression is better, but filesize remains about the same as what could fit on a DVD. It looks incredibly ugly. Look, if you're going to do HD, let's just get as high a bitrate as possible. I own all 3 consoles, and I don't care what plays what. I'm just in this for the best high definition experience. I even took bluray over HDDVD just because the bitrate for video is higher. I'm not going to do downloadable movies.
I'm not even a videophile or audiophile! I'm just tired of seeing blocks all over the place!
If you put it on the internet, and users are meant to access it, why should search engines differentiate any content based on probably arbitrary criteria? If pay sites restrict content and give out special logins for paying users, search engines cannot index it and the content is kept 'private'. If a site that has non-restricted content (restricted by special login) then why shouldn't it be indexed? It would be a disadvantage to the end user, because they cannot find the content as easily (especially if the web site's search engine sucks) and it would be a disservice to the content provider, since their site would be less likely to show up in search results. What is the point? Is this the same thing as people disabling right-click on certain web sites to try and prevent you from 'stealing' content, the same content that is available in your cache, and that would be illegal to use if the content is copyrighted anyway? Is this the same thing as people embedding pictures in flash for the same reason? If all of this results in less usable, less indexable, and more annoyances, just to restrict the way content is accessible and viewed?
Then that's not the web anymore, that's not really in the spirit of the internet... why not just stick to print or something? And then have it in a special store where you can only buy it with some currency you made up, with an exchange rate you control? Oh, and have a special door for the store that can only be opened with a special device you have to order! Er, anyway... I hope you can understand my point.
No shit end users won't. Parties who are trying to figure out ways to unlock the iPhone themselves, will, however. Open Source does allow end users to participate in documentation, translation, sending crash dumps, etc. You're right, end users won't be of much help to this particular open source project. However, other devs and other hackers will be able to help.
Where's the incentive for people to work on it if a commercial entity takes your project, adds on a whole bunch of functionality and releases it without publishing the source? Your bit contribution is tangled up in everything else they did and you'll never see the modifications. License it under GPL and they can't absorb your project into theirs, and you will see changes given back to you. If all you want to do is work on a project for your own purposes and don't care what anyone else does to it, then public domain is fine. If you want a community-built project that grows and still keeps growing as a community project even when it becomes commercially interesting, then you want GPL. If, however, a commercial entity takes your project and pumps resources quickly into a newly closed version, you will see the public domain one die off or become irrelevant, especially if the commercial entity releases a few closed binaries for free first and then decides to charge for updates. What chance do you have of maintaining a free/libre implementation if your project becomes too interesting or disrupts too much commercial activity?
No, it's because now we're further from 9/11 (omg teh terror!!!), so now there's less sensationalism and less people are acting paranoid, and more are acting rationally. If we were closer to 9/11, wouldn't the chances increase that the courts would ok "teh secret wiretap against the terrorists!" for no rasin?
Just because there are 25 programmers tied to the project doesn't mean that they are the only ones who make contributions to the project via bug reports, patches, providing documentation, and it doesn't even include those who work on the modules, does it? Maybe the core of Apache doesn't need to change so quickly because it's pretty stable feature-wise, and modules incorporate most new features? Did you see how long it took to go from Apache 1.x to 2.x? I'm not talking about how long it took to release, although that was long, but even adoption of Apache 2.x took a long time because 1.x was considered stable and secure, and hardly any development was still ongoing besides bugfixes. The additional development was a *deterrant* to adoption of the new version. There are quite a few factors to consider here and the article barely glosses over them, but aside from some rhetoric on Tomcat, the article doesn't really have any actual information to back up the point they're trying to make.
Slashdot Mirror
I do that too, and now it's mostly because I simply don't know, and I'm not familiar with these programs or the OS anymore. The last version I used heavily is 2000, and I haven't touched Vista. For my computer skills I actually want to go out and buy a copy of Vista (or if someone wants, they can mail me theirs so I don't give any cash to MS) just in order to keep up to date on things. I don't really go over to peoples' houses and fix their computers anymore... My family's setup with Ubuntu so I don't have to troubleshoot for them anymore, and I'm simply not familiar with Windows anymore. I haven't forgotten all of the knowledge that applies to Windows 2000 and previous versions, but knowledge of Windows circa back then doesn't really help me solve all problems for people today. Sometimes it's frustrating because it just seems like certain problems would be avoided if using Linux or FOSS in the first place, like parent says.
Not to mention software that expires. I don't know if this still applies because I haven't used Windows for a few years, but I've downloaded a bunch of 'niche' software that I considered useful and backed up to disc. Especially software where they've upgraded it and added new features that made the software either too feature-filled when I just want something simple for one purpose, or when I needed a particular app because it was the most optimized and would load up quickly and do what I want. When I had to reinstall Windows or customize a new computer for someone, then I would install that software. However, then I would find out that it would expire and you had to manually roll back the date to install, or change a registry entry, or it would use some other way to tell what date it was and would simply refuse to install. Sometimes there was software that detected an active internet connection and if it found an update it would refuse to let you continue using the current version.
Sometimes the setup program would detect the version of Windows you're using and refuse to install if it didn't take into account future releases of Windows. For example there are programs that would install on Windows 95/98 but not ME/2000/XP. Some would install on Windows 2000 but not XP or Vista. Some programs required XP and refused to install on earlier versions even if the program would work fine if I manually copied the files and registry entries.
If I installed a new version of Windows, sometimes it required new drivers, and sometimes those drivers were never available. I bought this one 56K modem from Cardinal and it worked fine in Windows 98. When I upgraded to Windows 2000, the modem required new drivers that never existed because the company went bankrupt. In Linux, the drivers are included in the kernel and are maintained along with the kernel, so I don't have to worry. I don't even have to hunt down driver CDs or visit annoying web sites that require me to take out my card and read some serial number on it, or pay for a drivers CD. I don't have to visit all of those annoying "drivers database" sites that often require passwords and pollute search engine results.
With Linux I can boot up with a LiveCD and access all of my files, even if I forgot a password or if I poked around somewhere I shouldn't have as root (as a Linux noob this helped). I can even take my hard disk out and put it in someone else's machine and I won't have to make a single configuration change to boot up into the environment I had setup. With Windows it would sometimes barf, or at least it would screw up what drivers were installed when I would put the hard disk in another machine and then back in mine. If it was a different motherboard you could be totally screwed.
With Linux I've been able to setup usable systems on old hardware for family members that find their machines too slow with today's antivirus and firewall software. I've been able to limit the damage they can do to their own systems quite easily. I don't know about anyone else but I had a much easier time learning about permissions with Linux than I did about group policies in Windows. I had a much easier time editing config files than I did editing the registry (and figuring out what I had to look for) in order to lock up various user interface settings so that they couldn't be modified.
I had a much easier time using a wider array of file formats for the purposes I wanted... for example I could more easily convert between different video and audio formats, and the programs I liked all shared the same libraries for the various codecs, it's not like you had to have seperate plugin formats for each application like is often the case in Windows.
Those are just a few reasons off the top of my head why I like Linux better. I'm also a gamer, but when it comes to games I have consoles. If I want to play games on my PC I use an emulator, and that suits me fine. I didn't used to enjoy gaming under Windows anyway, any time I had to reins
"But watermarking? Eh. I don't care. You're supposed to not be sharing music you bought, and unless someone actually breaks in and steals it, there's really no legitimate reason to find music that you bought out on the net somewhere."
Sure, but you can share your songs under fair use, etc. Say someone you made a mix for decides to start distributing one of the songs. Would you get in trouble or your friend?
I wonder how many calories video games have? Oh right, it's the McDonald's that people while playing the video games. Personally I play a lot of video games, watch a lot of TV, and go to work. I don't go out of my way to do physical activity but I don't inhibit it either, I just do what feels natural. I eat well though. Ever since I cut out McDonald's and drinking soda, I dropped 65 lbs over like 4 months. Now I'm not overweight in the least, and even then I wasn't really fat before, but bending over made me sweat, and I didn't like that. I still eat about a bag of cookies a day (a habit which I am cutting out now, I just can't quit all my bad habits all at once you know) and it's nowhere near as aweful as McDonald's, and I don't feel like vomiting after I eat either.
I recently bought a Powerbook and have gotten into OS X. I really like it, and it's great for doing certain things. I can see why the experience is a lot different than just slapping an OS X theme on your current OS. I've used it for a month though, but I can see why the people who generally like Windows would gravitate more towards Linux. The apps work in a way that's more familiar to them, and the variety of applications that Windows users expect is there.
With OS X in terms of the normal shareware and freeware apps you find, you're not going to get what you would on Windows, and Linux's offerings are more in line with that as well. There are multiple versions of software to suit many niche needs, and they have more complex options. On OS X, everything is geared towards integrating with the desktop and the usual applications. On Linux and Windows, everything is made to be extensible and support a wider variety of hardware and hacking options than the usual stuff for OS X.
Personally, I go back to Linux often when I'm not just browsing the web because there are still more emulators I can use for games, and for development use I find I have a wider array of libraries and examples to choose from for what I'm doing, the applications I use integrate better with each other, there is more support for a wider variety of formats in each application I use, and most of all, because I am not stuck using commercial software that restricts me in certain ways from doing what I want. I find that on OS X, and to a lesser degree Windows, a lot of artificial restrictions are enforced on proprietary software, and I can't do what I want.
For myself and my family, we're set up on Linux, and most of my friends use quite a lot of open source software just because it lets them do what they want and doesn't enforce artificial restrictions. For my family it's because I can lock things down in a way that makes it still easy for them to do what they want without a lot of prompts or greyed out options, and I get a software platform that works the exact same no matter what their hardware is so it's easier for me to support.
Sure he's free to speak, but what about all the people paying attention to him, quoting him, featuring him, etc... are they just capitalizing on this or are they fucking nuts too? I even have to wonder about me, reading this story and actually making a post.
People don't really learn german or latin or whatever roots to their languages these days, so they're unaware of the true meanings of some words. It's not uncommon for half of peoples' vocabularies to come from words that they just know by rote. People on the internet and in music (and pop culture in general) are now just making up words because they feel they have a word that fits better simply because they feel the word they use somehow has an intrinsic meaning, or that the use implies its meaning and it takes hold. The language you know and love only is used in business and has its roots in proper grammar and definitions etc; It's not the same language that people use in social situations or popular culture. This pop language will continue to grow and evolve because it has its roots in today's culture because the people creating and growing these terms do so because they understand where the words come from. They don't understand the roots of their language so they're not going to use words that they learnt by rote instead of by the root, when they can just as easily throw out words that have much more meaning to them and the people around them. We're just going to have to start having "formal english" and "social english."
By instinct, I would pronounce a lot of words the wrong way, such as "draught" or "digest", because I don't know how to pronounce those words except phonetically. I never learned the roots of the words or how to pronounce certain things when or why. Some words are going to sound or look weird to me or even seem out of place just because I don't know these things, so I will be much more likely to use words that mean something more to me and tie into my experiences more.
I don't know if you've seen some french books, and then heard french people talking. Around here at least, it's totally not the same thing. One is definitely more formal and one is definitely more slang-laden. It doesn't even matter if the book is for casual reading. If you walk into a job, then you're not going to use the slang-laden french either, you'll turn to the more formal french. And then when you're hanging out with friends, it's back to slang-french. That's just how things will always be until people in formal situations accept slang, or people are taught languages formally and learn the roots of their languages as well.
File sharing legislation will initially target illegal downloads
How do they figure out if a transfer is illegal? Surely people transfer copyrighted materials for many legal reasons. This is always the big problem with these schemes.
I don't know about you, but Halo 3 was a letdown to me because I felt like I was just playing Halo 2.5. The single player campaign was kind of short and not very exciting.
Another one for Mario Galaxy was the first level you play... you start walking over the edge and the level flips over and you realize you can stand on almost any surface if you're clever with the gameplay physics...
Mario Galaxy is definitely my game of the year. It's pretty much what every Mario fan has been waiting for after New Super Mario Bros. Right from the beginning, you keep getting wowed until you just can't believe you're playing this game. The physics of the gravity, the variety of gameplay in the different power-ups you can grab, and the focus on core Mario gameplay really brings this game to the top. This game will have you perfecting the controls in every sense, and they're a joy to use. You'll be doing acrobatics all over levels to reach areas that seem impossible to get to. The game is also constantly surprising with the various bosses and tricks the different levels use to get the most out of the gameplay engine.
I just sincerely hope this won't be the last actual 'traditional' (platformer) Mario game we'll be seeing on the Wii. Mario Sunshine was pretty much the only one on the Gamecube, Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64, and Mario World for the SNES, but NES got SMB 1, 2, and 3. I realize it takes a lot to put out one of these games, but I really don't want to be playing any Princess Peach, Wario, or Luigi games or any of these knock-offs. They're great in their own right, but really you wish you were playing a new Mario game. I realize too much could water down the franchise, but it definitely won't get tired if there's a new one every 2 or 1.5 years. Come on, Nintendo! I want as much Mario as I can get!
So ignore a truth unless the person saying it is guilt-free? Facts don't stand on their own anymore?
Isn't the point of wikipedia to let the users decide what to put up? Isn't the whole point to avoid one viewpoint?
People will start tuning out anything that isn't directed towards them. After I hear enough of this crap, like probably 1 minute's worth, I'm pretty much going to stop paying attention unless I hear my name. I give out fake names or made-up nicknames when registering for anything*, so even if they've got my name and figure out how to identify me with the device that's emitting the sound in the first place, they're still not going to get my attention. And am I really going to turn my iPod off? I've got music on just about every device I own now, I'm listening to music almost every chance I get.
Plus, look at car alarms... these things go off every 5 seconds in parking lots, nobody starts panicking or screaming, nobody calls the cops. People hear it so often now that it's just a deterrant to the crook if they get nervous enough about what they're doing, or if they take too long doing it. If people hear the alarm going silent they think "Finally!" not "What's happening now?"
See, that's kind of my point. If marketing is invasive enough, people stop paying attention and start finding ways to get the attention of advertisers off them. Instead of people putting up with advertisements and the ads having some effect on the population, instead they'll lead the population to shutting the ads out entirely.
Then the only person selling anything will be the guy who can block the ads... kinda like the autodial blocker. So brilliance all around fellows, congrats on this one.
They promote OSS at every turn. All of their APIs are open and documented. They use open formats and open protocols whenever they can. They release application frameworks for others to use to build applications that play nice with OSS. They release applications across all platforms, actually supporting versions of their software that work on OSS platforms and with OSS software. But to retain the attention of users, they choose to keep some of their solutions as proprietary, but they are ones they maintain themselves. You want them to open source their search engine, but the only reason their search engine is successful is because of their constant tweaking and additions in their specific way, and users still use their search engine without problems. OSS can interface with their search engine if they want to leverage its benefits.
How could OSS really benefit from Google open sourcing their search engine? By publicizing the inner workings of their main asset, it would divert attention away from google. Google supporting OSS in the ways that they do wouldn't matter so much anymore if nobody was paying attention to them. If everyone had what made Google unique, then others could get the attention Google deserved but put it to a use that may not be leaning towards OSS so much, and then OSS wouldn't be as much of a benefit anymore. It serves Linux well because an OS is something every computer needs, but a search engine doesn't need to be run by anyone, and Google seem to be doing a good job. It's not like there aren't any OSS search solutions. But OSS seems to be benefiting as much from Google as the other way around.
Don't you think Google is giving something back to the OSS community just by standing as a viable example of people using OSS in a commercial environment? Don't you think that buys OSS credibility? They run on Linux, they are putting a lot of force behind Firefox, and all the other stuff I mentioned above.
What exactly do you want Google to do, and how do you think it would actually benefit OSS in reality more than what they are doing now? You're really unhappy about the current scenario?
Anyone who installs "beta", "community technology preview", or "release candidate" software on their systems and then complains about the experience and how it sucks should be branded with a big ol' "D U M B A S S" on their short-bus-riding-tuckus.
What about those who are trying to install the release candidate in order to get a working system out of the software that they had installed previously, which was supposed to be a good experience but wasn't? This is typically why you have people asking "Should I install the beta patch?" on just about any amount of software, unless you're talking about overclockers that want beta firmwares/BIOS/drivers that supposedly eek out marginal performance gains. Don't immediately think someone installing a beta or release candidate of critical software is some kind of dumbass. Users want to know other users' experiences, especially regarding improvements on outstanding bugs.
You're way off base here. The way I play Metroid 3 is on the most sensitive setting with no lock-on targetting... The only time I ever use the lock-on button at all is because when you hold that button down, it locks your movement into strafe, which makes it simple to walk across straight and narrow areas like tiny bridges or whatever... or if I want to jump a lot but still want to be facing forwards. Even then, when lock-on mode is turned on in this way, you can still move the targetting reticle around to aim at different areas of the screen, all it does is it freezes the screen in the direction it was in when you pressed the button... you still have to aim at what you want to shoot at.
When stuff like this happens, all countries have this in common: it's pretty much solely the government's doing, and the citizens were not considered or consulted while making the decision which affects them so much. Definitely it's not what I want as a Canadian.
Downloadable content is ugly. Artifacts are everywhere. I've only got about 10 movies in HD (bluray), and after a while I get used to seeing it. I've gone back to watch some DVDs and even if I'm just comparing it to standard definition stuff on bluray, it looks ugly. If you watch it on a CRT 480i TV, you'll never see the difference, but on anything else, even 480p TVs, you notice that DVDs look ugly.
Now take downloadable content. The bitrate is higher, compression is better, but filesize remains about the same as what could fit on a DVD. It looks incredibly ugly. Look, if you're going to do HD, let's just get as high a bitrate as possible. I own all 3 consoles, and I don't care what plays what. I'm just in this for the best high definition experience. I even took bluray over HDDVD just because the bitrate for video is higher. I'm not going to do downloadable movies.
I'm not even a videophile or audiophile! I'm just tired of seeing blocks all over the place!
So does that mean all countries besides US will be switching to non-US software?
If you put it on the internet, and users are meant to access it, why should search engines differentiate any content based on probably arbitrary criteria? If pay sites restrict content and give out special logins for paying users, search engines cannot index it and the content is kept 'private'. If a site that has non-restricted content (restricted by special login) then why shouldn't it be indexed? It would be a disadvantage to the end user, because they cannot find the content as easily (especially if the web site's search engine sucks) and it would be a disservice to the content provider, since their site would be less likely to show up in search results. What is the point? Is this the same thing as people disabling right-click on certain web sites to try and prevent you from 'stealing' content, the same content that is available in your cache, and that would be illegal to use if the content is copyrighted anyway? Is this the same thing as people embedding pictures in flash for the same reason? If all of this results in less usable, less indexable, and more annoyances, just to restrict the way content is accessible and viewed?
Then that's not the web anymore, that's not really in the spirit of the internet... why not just stick to print or something? And then have it in a special store where you can only buy it with some currency you made up, with an exchange rate you control? Oh, and have a special door for the store that can only be opened with a special device you have to order! Er, anyway... I hope you can understand my point.
No shit end users won't. Parties who are trying to figure out ways to unlock the iPhone themselves, will, however. Open Source does allow end users to participate in documentation, translation, sending crash dumps, etc. You're right, end users won't be of much help to this particular open source project. However, other devs and other hackers will be able to help.
Where's the incentive for people to work on it if a commercial entity takes your project, adds on a whole bunch of functionality and releases it without publishing the source? Your bit contribution is tangled up in everything else they did and you'll never see the modifications. License it under GPL and they can't absorb your project into theirs, and you will see changes given back to you. If all you want to do is work on a project for your own purposes and don't care what anyone else does to it, then public domain is fine. If you want a community-built project that grows and still keeps growing as a community project even when it becomes commercially interesting, then you want GPL. If, however, a commercial entity takes your project and pumps resources quickly into a newly closed version, you will see the public domain one die off or become irrelevant, especially if the commercial entity releases a few closed binaries for free first and then decides to charge for updates. What chance do you have of maintaining a free/libre implementation if your project becomes too interesting or disrupts too much commercial activity?
No, it's because now we're further from 9/11 (omg teh terror!!!), so now there's less sensationalism and less people are acting paranoid, and more are acting rationally. If we were closer to 9/11, wouldn't the chances increase that the courts would ok "teh secret wiretap against the terrorists!" for no rasin?
Just because there are 25 programmers tied to the project doesn't mean that they are the only ones who make contributions to the project via bug reports, patches, providing documentation, and it doesn't even include those who work on the modules, does it? Maybe the core of Apache doesn't need to change so quickly because it's pretty stable feature-wise, and modules incorporate most new features? Did you see how long it took to go from Apache 1.x to 2.x? I'm not talking about how long it took to release, although that was long, but even adoption of Apache 2.x took a long time because 1.x was considered stable and secure, and hardly any development was still ongoing besides bugfixes. The additional development was a *deterrant* to adoption of the new version. There are quite a few factors to consider here and the article barely glosses over them, but aside from some rhetoric on Tomcat, the article doesn't really have any actual information to back up the point they're trying to make.